You and your comrades help restore the crumbling honor of Westcrown, fight against a decades-old curse, and do battle with an enemy far more deadly than any simple fiend...

Welcome to the Council Of Thieves campaign!

This is your new campaign homepage. I’ll be adding material from the Cheliax as well as the Council player’s guides, and if I can find text for the Inner Sea player’s guide I’ll add that too.

Cheers, — BC

CHELIAX – In the Thrall of Hell

Non-Chelaxians often ask the nation’s citizens, “How could this have happened? How could you have let devil-worshipers take over?” Such questions betray a fundamental lack of knowledge of Chelish nature. Cheliax has long imagined a central role for itself in the history of Golarion. For more than 500 years, it was the prime military and economic power on the continent. Its rule featured prominently in the Starfall Doctrine, which prophesied a time when the god Aroden himself would return to take the crown and usher in a new reign of peace and justice. Dreaming themselves to be the inheritors of grand destinies, the Chelaxians grew proud—arrogant, even—and expanded their empire mercilessly in the name of their glorious fate.

It came as a great surprise to them when Aroden died. Desperate, the nation sought to hold onto its selfimportant stories and national mythology. How they found themselves under the heel of a different leader, Abrogail Thrune—who promised them the glory that Aroden’s death destroyed even as she twisted the country away from its most cherished ideals—is a riddle to which few know the answer. The darkness that swept the country after their god’s demise nearly destroyed the Chelaxians. They were shattered and riven; 30 years of internecine warfare turned families against each other. Small tyrants arose, promising shelter from the increasing fury of the civil war, and were just as swiftly swept aside by ambitious underlings, crafty foes, and diseases that ravaged the country. Chaos reigned, uncertainty in every breath, and the dreams of Imperial Cheliax were a golden memory of a time-that-was.

The wars grew steadily more vicious, and the would-be rulers of the country turned to increasingly desperate measures, until at last Abrogail Thrune struck a bargain with the darkest powers of Hell. Whatever pact she made that night was decisive: the hordes of Hell came to her aid, and the House of Thrune ascended to the throne of Cheliax. Her family has remained in power ever since. Since the Thrune Ascendancy, the country has known relative peace, but that physical peace comes at the cost of peace of mind, and perhaps the soul itself. Devils—most of them in the guise of mortals—roam to the very corners of Cheliax, constrained by some force within the borders that the nation rightfully claims as its own; Hellknights and Asmodean Inquisitors enforce the law with brutal clarity and vicious efficiency; the noble houses engage in bloodsports and crush the lower classes for their entertainment. The golden dream that was Cheliax lives on, but in name only, and woe comes to those who dare to voice their discontent. The Chelaxians have traded their freedom and their future for the promise of the lash.